Professor Ines Angeli Murzak at The Catholic World Report puts her finger on the transformation of the Church wreaked by Pope Francis:

I am back from a splendid pontifical high Mass in a very special Marian shrine with an overwhelmingly large number of pilgrims overflowing the church, which is unusual in northern Europe (Germany). The local bishop seemed more like a politician preaching in favor of a political party than a bishop teaching the faith. The homily started with a statement in support of the European Union, bashing nationalists and populisms, while praising partnerships and advocating for protecting the environment. Only after this diatribe did all who were gathered, having traveled miles to attend, hear about the Assumption of Our Lady.

Why are our clergy and bishops not teaching what they are supposed to teach, instead becoming entangled in contemporary politics and ideology—and worse, taking sides in current politics and with certain politicians and sharing the same script of their political agenda? Don’t we have enough of politics already, as we are bombarded from every direction? Why isn’t the Church being the Church, a teacher—a magistra–of faith? Why aren’t our bishops teaching?

Obviously, I was disappointed, to say the least. However, the homily for the Feast of the Assumption reminded me of the August 9, 2019, La Stampa interview of Pope Francis. The topics covered seemed almost identical to those included in the homily. In fact, when I first read the Holy Father’s interview, I thought it to be probably one of the most political interviews in his pontificate so far. The themes explored in the interview are hot buttons, highly contested in both European politics in general and Italian politics in particular: European Union integration, sovereignty, immigration, globalism, populism, nationalism, and the environment.

Where is Christ and the Church as Mater et Magistra in all this? Why are the priorities shifted to a an ideological-political platform? What has the Church to offer that is different from what the political parties and political contestants are offering to the faithful and to the lapsed Catholics who on Holy Days make an effort to return? In what ways, exactly, is the Church qualified to make judgments on political parties and policies?

Go here to read the rest. Trading in Christianity for the latest in left wing politics is nothing new. The mainline Protestant churches blazed this path and paid for it in shrinking membership and ever growing irrelevance. The Church, under the current Pope, is trotting down the same highway to extinction.

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One of the long established goals of the left, regarding the church, is to use the church as a platform to further Godless political agenda’s. Another is to eliminate the teaching of the faith and “neutering” God in the minds of the masses.

Don L et al, Half of the active ordained clergy in the Church are active homosexuals, sodorapists, and sexual predators, – from priest, to pastor, to bishop, to cardinal, – and many of the others not so active enable them, protect them, and cover up for them, spending our billion$s to pay for their crimes. Now why would such an organization 1. NOT defend the unborn, abortion being an intrinsic evil, and 2. openly support democrat totalitarians here and totalitarians of every stripe worldwide? The democrats and the other totalitarians, who are using the homoarchy as tontos utiles, push [actually ram down society’s throat] the normalization of an intrinsic evil and then demand preferential treatment of those who choose, voluntarily, to engage in homosexual actions. Yes, choose freely – there is no homogene. Do the Pooh Bear thing, think, think, think, 2 + 2 = 4, and the democrat/totalitarian/homoarchy alliance is crystal clear. Guy McClung, Texas

rading in Christianity for the latest in left wing politics is nothing new. The mainline Protestant churches blazed this path and paid for it in shrinking membership and ever growing irrelevance.

FWIW, in my experience in Episcopal congregations, political blather on Sunday is rare. That’s the sort of thing which emerges from conferences and conventions, and (to a lesser degree) the published material of seminary faculty and circulars from the diocesan house. See David Mills on Episcopal bishops as he had occasion to observe them when an employee of one of their divinity schools (“mostly, very mediocre men”, who showed no understanding of how little Episcopal parishioners noticed what they were doing). Per Mills, the sort of layman who manages to navigate the distance between the pew and the general convention has a worse disposition than the ordained clergy who attend these conventions.

What you get in ordinary parish life is a small-time NGO administrator who fusses over his physical plant and his donation flows. They have more respect for the rubrics than do Catholic clergy and I’ve never set foot in an Episcopal Church which made use of anything but traditional hymns (which the choir and congregants will actually sing). That having been said, the sermons are wretched. They are 20 minute long meanders which manage to say nothing the congregant will recall. The relationship between the sermon and the daily readings is random. I’ve attended Sunday services in an array of denominations, and liberal protestants with scant exception preach in this vague, naval gazing way. At tiresome length. Every once in a while you come across a clergyman who went into ministry after a long run in some other endeavour (one I know went from the Navy to the business world to the ministry late in life; another left the ministry, had 25 years in business, then returned to it). These men you can converse with; some of the old timers you can as well, but those cohorts are rapidly disappearing. You get people who want to be den mothers on salary, social workers manque, people who didn’t know or don’t know what else to do with their life. They’re liberals with few exceptions, because people who are drawn to employments with undefined goals and weak operational measures of competence are that way. Of course, there are quite a mass of Catholic clergy who are like this too.